The agentic self: The brain learns whether action matters before deciding what to learn

A study by Liu et al. (open access article with interesting graphics) decomposes our “agency” into at least two computations: estimating whether one is in control, and using that estimate to determine which consequences should be attributed to one's actions. This has obvious relevance to learned helplessness, depression and the construction of an agentive self. Their central claim is that Humans learn whether outcomes depend on their actions through a dorsomedial prefrontal–dorsal raphe circuit. Once estimated, controllability alters learning signals in dopamine-related midbrain structures and a separate prefrontal credit-assignment system. A few caveats are that TMS cannot selectively perturb the entire proposed dmPFC–raphe pathway, and fMRI of small brainstem nuclei is technically demanding. Laboratory controllability is simpler than the ambiguous causal structures of ordinary life. Here is their summary:

When humans and other animals assess that they have little control over outcomes, their motivation and capacity for learning change. However, how we first learn what the control level is and how it then influenceslearning remain unclear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magneticstimulation (TMS) in human participants, we provide both recording and transient disruption evidence for an anatomically grounded model of control learning, in which dorsomedialprefrontal cortex (dmPFC) tracks confidence in each individual decision in order to then estimate controllability and changes in controllability via interactions with the dorsal raphe nucleus. Disrupting activity in this circuit, via dmPFC manipulation,impaired control learning. In addition, another mechanism was identified through which control estimates influenced learning. Participants’ estimates of controllability were associated with widespread changes in outcome signals, including in dopamine-associated midbrain nuclei and in credit-assignment-linked signals in a distinct prefrontal cortex subregion.